Microsoft has just revealed its next great innovation: Windows Holographic! It's an augmented reality experience that employs a headset, much like all the VR goggles that are currently rising in popularity, but Microsoft's solution adds holograms to the world around you. The HoloLens headset is described as "the most advanced holographic computer the world has ever seen." It's a self-contained computer, including a CPU, a GPU, and a dedicated holographic processor. The dark lenses up front contain a see-through display, there's spatial sound so you can "hear" holograms behind you, and it also integrates a set of sensors. HoloLens, says Microsoft, will be available in the Windows 10 timeframe.

We've spoken in the past about teaching Clang to fully support Windows and be compatible with MSVC. Until now, a big missing piece in this story has been debugging the clang-generated executables. Over the past 6 months, we've started working on making LLDB work well on Windows and support debugging both regular Windows programs and those produced by Clang.

Neowin has learned a bit more about these extensions and how Microsoft plans to make its browser attractive for developers. Spartan will be able to use Chrome extensions and, while we are not sure if they will work 100% natively, the way extensions have been implemented is nearly identical to that of Chrome which will make it a simple process for developers to make their extensions work on Spartan.

The biggest takeaway Microsoft is hoping to deliver this week, sources say, is that Windows 10 is built on a single, common "core" (known internally as "OneCore") that will work across a variety of devices, from phones, tablets, PCs, large-screen displays like the company's Perceptive Pixel multitouch-screen devices, and ultimately, Xbox.

OneCore implies more than just the common kernel that Microsoft touted as part of its Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 stories. In addition to the OS kernel, OneCore also includes the dynamic link libraries (DLLs), application platform layer and other pieces of the operating system. Microsoft's pitch to developers with Windows 10 will be they can target the same core environment with their apps, and those "Universal" apps will work across a range of screen sizes. These apps will be available in a single store, rather than separate Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox stores.

Last week, Samsung officially announced its first Tizen-based smartphone, the Z1 in India. The device is priced at INR 5,700 (~ $92), a relatively higher price tag for its low-end hardware, especially when you compare it with Android value-for-money smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi 1S and the Asus Zenfone 4. It features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor from Spreadtrum, 768MB RAM, and 4GB internal storage, but Samsung is trying to defend its pricing. The Korean giant claims that Tizen can not only run Android apps, it is also lighter than other platforms. It means that Tizen requires relatively less powerful hardware to run as smooth as other platforms.

A new video from Simrandeep Singh Garcha shows that Tizen runs quite fast and smooth on the Z1, a rarity for smartphones in a similar price range. The video shows Tizen running without any sort of lag on the Z1, as well as new features like customisable colour themes and icon sets. It appears that even things like web browsing are smooth and fast on Tizen, as seen in the second video, thanks to faster page load times as well as smooth scrolling, panning, and zooming.

For the past six months or so, I've become increasingly concerned about the quality of Apple software. From the painful gestation of OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) with its damaged iWork apps, to the chaotic iOS 8 launch, iCloud glitches, and the trouble with Continuity, I've gotten a bad feeling about Apple’s software quality management. "It Just Works", the company's pleasant-sounding motto, became an easy target, giving rise to jibes of "it just needs more work".

2015 will see Sailfish OS evolve towards a display resolution and form factor independent operating system capable of running on a range of devices. It will also bring a renewed Sailfish UI. We plan to demo this evolution at the Mobile World Congress in March.

We have now started to work full speed on the new UI framework changes and are currently in the prototyping phase. Our main driver is to introduce changes that

1. enhance user experience on both the phone and tablet
2. strengthen the OS core
3. simplify implementation for a better managed code base

The Sailfish OS is still young, and needs more stability, better connectivity, and simplification to the user experience. The small Sailfish OS native app ecosystem needs its own program, which guides and supports app developers. The amount of applications is not important, rather the most important applications for people need to be native, and of high quality. Friends, Tweetian, Sailgrande, just to mention a few, are excellent proof points of the potential of native Sailfish OS applications.

Xiaomi has announced their spectacularly spec'ed Mi Note Pro, which features the latest in Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors alongside a big 2K display and 4GB of RAM for a killer price. That being said, there's something that is not-so-good about Xiaomi's offerings that is a concern to many developers, especially many found here on XDA: Xiaomi's repeated violations of the GPLv2 license for the Linux kernel which Android (and thus Xiaomi's devices), is built on.

I'm going to describe steps needed to have the following system:

• Dual-boot with Arch Linux / Mac OS X
• Boot manager UEFI Gummiboot (simple, can handle several kernels easily)
• Full disk encryption (Mac OS X and Arch Linux)
• LVM support
• Suspend to disk using a swapfile
• Settings for a great battery life (~09h30)

I keep the Mac OS X partition, to be able to update the firmware later.

Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.

The fate of Google Glass has been up in the air these past few months, as developers seem to have stopped paying attention to the new-age eyewear and Glasshole sightings have decreased significantly. But Glass isn't done yet: Google's announcing today Glass is "graduating" from the Google X experimental projects incubator to become its own independent division - a division that will report into Nest's Tony Fadell. Current Glass head Ivy Ross will retain day-to-day authority, but she'll report to Fadell. Nest itself will remain separate and independent, and Tony will still be in charge there as well.

Xiaomi, one of the fastest-growing tech companies in China, has announced its latest flagship device. The Mi Note is a 6.95mm-thick smartphone with a 5.7-inch 1080p display, a 13-megapixel camera, options for a Snapdragon 801 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 3000 mAh battery, and curved glass on both the front and back panels; the company refers to the front glass as "2.5D" and the rear glass as "3D."

While Xiaomi has occasionally stoked accusations of Apple mimicry with devices like its Mi Pad, the Mi Note isn't really in that vein. It might not win any awards for industrial innovation, but it appears to be an understated product without much in the way of direct design lifts.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd recently approached BlackBerry Ltd about buying the company for as much as $7.5 billion, looking to gain access to its patent portfolio, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents seen by Reuters.

South Korea's Samsung proposed an initial price range of $13.35 to $15.49 per share, which represents a premium of 38 percent to 60 percent over BlackBerry's current trading price, the source said.

Executives from the two companies, which are working with advisers, met last week to discuss a potential transaction, the source said, asking not to be identified because the conversations are private.